Blue Water, Green Skipper

Before the Stone Barrington thrillers, Stuart Woods was a 37-year-old novice living in Ireland who had never owned anything bigger than a dinghy. This - his first book, four years before his first novel - is the story of the eighteen months he spent turning himself into someone who could sail the 1976 OSTAR, the Observer Singlehanded Transatlantic Race, aboard his commissioned yacht Golden Harp.

The subtitle says it plainly: A Memoir of Sailing Alone Across the Atlantic. What makes it durable is the green part - Woods documents his own ignorance honestly enough that the book doubles as a syllabus for anyone starting from nothing.

The most encouraging book on this shelf for the simple reason that he had no business finishing, and finished. Narrated by Stephen Collins.